Composing her
memoirs, onetime Supreme Court nominee Karen Hollander tells us up front
that she is going to reveal the truth about a deadly incident from her radical
past. But despite that irresistible beginning, she doesn’t actually remember
or know everything she wants to put in her book. She interviews old friends
and even has herself investigated by a CIA-operative lover, but her old compatriots
don’t share her eagerness to have their dark secret come to light. As Andersen
creates spellbinding suspense through a careful dissemination of information,
spy games, real and imagined, thread the plot together. A child of privilege
on Chicago’s wealthy North Shore, Hollander acted out James Bond novels with
friends. The “missions” grew in seriousness when she became a college student
outraged by Vietnam. In the present, a trip to a G20 summit as her granddaughter’s
chaperone provides both contemporary context and a comparison of protest movements
separated by half a century. This is an ambitious and remarkable novel, wonderfully
voiced, about memory, secrets, guilt, and the dangers of certitude. Moreover,
it asks essential questions about what it means to be an American and, in a
sense, what it means to be America. Andersen’s best yet.